Millbrae holds on to beat Pacifica

That theory seemed to be at work Wednesday when Millbrae opened Joe DiMaggio play against Pacifica at Skyline College. Logan Freethy, Henry Wrigley and Justin Granato - starters for the championship Burlingame team - combined for five hits, reached base seven times, scored three runs and drove in three.

Millbrae needed all that production, plus a gutsy pitching performance from Tony Brunicardi, to pull out a 4-3 win. Millbrae scored all four runs in the first inning and then watched as Pacifica chipped away at the lead. Pacifica cut it to 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh with a two-out rally, and had the tying run at second base, but Brunicardi induced Brad Norris to ground out to third baseman Steve Harty to end the game.

"It's just one of those deals where they're coasting off the high school season," said Millbrae manager Eric Gieseker. "It's just going to take time to mesh."

Millbrae jumped on Pacifica's Trevor Jodsaas early, which turned out to be fortunate. Jodsaas, the ace of the Terra Nova High School staff, didn't get a lot of defensive support in the first inning as Pacifica committed three errors in the inning.

Freethy led off the game with a single and moved to second on an errant pickoff throw. Following a strikeout, Wrigley came to the plate and mashed the second pitch he saw over the 320-foot sign in left field to give Millbrae a quick 2-0 lead.

Harty followed with an infield hit and took second when the Pacifica third baseman airmailed first base trying to get Harty, who would have been safe nonetheless. Granato followed and jumped on the first pitch he saw, stroking a single to right, which drove in Harty. The ball got by the right fielder, however, and Granato found himself standing on third.

Granato ended up scoring on a wild pitch during Ryan Walsh's at-bat.

From that point, however, the Millbrae bats went relatively silent. Millbrae managed only three hits the rest of the way. Jodsaas pitched the first five innings with Nick Regnart pitching two innings of no-hit ball.

" pitching was good," Gieseker said.

Meanwhile Brunicardi, a former standout at Burlingame who just completed his freshman season at College of San Mateo, was in and out of trouble all game long. He scattered eight hits while throwing a complete game. Like Jodsaas, Brunicardi didn't get a lot of help from his defense which committed four errors with all three of Pacifica's runs a result of those errors.

But Brunicardi got the outs when he needed them most. Pacifica stranded nine runners, five of which were in scoring position.

Pacifica managed an unearned run in the second inning and had runners on second and third with no outs in the third but got out of the inning without any damage. Pacifica added another unearned run in the fifth when Serra's Jimmy Parque led off the inning with a single and stole second. After a strikeout and groundout, Regnart hit a bouncing ball to third that hopped over Harty's glove, allowing Parque to score.

In the sixth, Norris led off with a triple when his base hit to right took a bad bounce over Wrigley's head and rolled to the fence. But Brunicardi retired the next three batters to get out of the inning.

It appeared Brunicardi was ready to have his first 1-2-3 inning in Pacifica's final at-bat as he retired the first two batters of the inning - the only time he did that all game long. But Serra's Anthony Stoloski singled to center to keep the inning alive.

It looked like it would be short lived as Regnart hit what should have been a game-ending grounder, but the throw to first was high and Pacifica had runners at the corners. Matt Montanez followed with a single to left to plate Stoloski and put the tying run on second. But Pacifica could not push it over.

"Tony only got four or five innings in college," Gieseker said. "He didn't have his 'A' stuff. He basically kept us in the game."